Cosmopolitan and decorous throughout, selective as it should be, and written with engaging style.
A mature writer who has revealed much of herself in poetry (The Ghostwriter, 2000, etc.) now, in sharp prose, tells more of her life’s story.
The daughter of a British village doctor, MacInnes summons up, as in any proper memoir, her father and mother, her boyfriends, her horse, and her little dog, too. In the days when young ladies went forth in hats and gloves, “fresh and green as a salad,” she went up to Oxford. During WWII, she served as a WREN driver. Then she joined the circle of bright young things around poet John Wain, about whom we learn a good deal, not omitting the condition of his fistula. After the war, she moved with new husband John McCormick and his son to Berlin, whose residents had changed little since Isherwood’s time. From Berlin, they emigrated to New York and after a while to Mexico City, where McCormick pursued his academic career and added to his interests a devotion to the manly art of confrontation with brave bulls. Then he took a post in New Jersey while sending his growing family to Maine. Just as MacInnes grew to appreciate the attractions of the Pine Tree State, her husband moved them to New Jersey, where she taught in the local community college. It’s quickly obvious that McCormick was no homebody, more clueless Agamemnon than thoughtful husband, gone frequently and for protracted periods. Indeed, until the final pages, there is scant evidence of uxorious regard in his relationship with his understanding spouse. And a person of considerable understanding and insight MacInnes certainly appears, at least in her own account, taking pleasure in her three children and whatever is natural. Her outlook is always feminine, rarely rigorously feminist, though the title of her signature poem, “I Object, Said the Object,” is revealing.
Cosmopolitan and decorous throughout, selective as it should be, and written with engaging style.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-42068-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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